PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The Portland Fire hired Alex Sarama as the franchise’s first head coach Friday.<\/p>\n
Sarama is currently an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers.<\/p>\n
The Fire, who begin play next season, had leaked the hire a few days earlier on one of their social media pages.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlex represents the next generation of coaching,\u201d Fire General Manager Vanja \u010cernivec said. \u201cHe\u2019s not just teaching the game, he\u2019s transforming it. His approach to player development, grounded in evidence-based science, research and creativity, aligns with our vision to make Portland a global hub for innovation in women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarama worked with \u010cernivec at the NBA Europe office in Madrid many years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opportunity to build something from the ground up is unique,\u201d Sarama said. \u201cAt the Fire, we\u2019re not just creating a team \u2014 we\u2019re redefining how the game is taught and played, through an approach centred around adaptability and supported by evidence-informed methodologies. We want to create a new standard for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarama joins Portland after serving as an assistant and director of player development for the Cavaliers. Before that he worked with the London Lions, Paris Basketball, the Rip City Remix and NBA EMEA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The Portland Fire hired Alex Sarama as the franchise’s first head coach Friday. Sarama is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-220067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}